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Comment by codq | Hacker News Reader

Again, ‘as a kid’ is what’s going on here.

I also grew up with OoT, absolutely obsessed and life-defining in many ways. Now I’m a certified Old, and while BotW didn’t click for me initially, I grew to love it and soon understood it to be one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.

That did require me to consider the context though, and force myself to play it with a type of ‘beginner’s mind’.

A few months ago, I decided to give Ocarina a play via the Nintendo Switch Online N64 emulator and—I couldn’t do it. With modern games to compare it to, the graphics, the frame rate, the controls, etc. was just not a good experience and I had to stop.

Same thing happened with Goldeneye. I can’t believe this was tolerable way back when. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

The kids growing up on BotW/TotK will have the same rose colored glasses for those games as many of us have for OoT.

I can’t wait to get off work today and fire up TotK.

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> Same thing happened with Goldeneye. I can’t believe this was tolerable way back when. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

I played dozens of hours of Goldeneye back in the day (a friend had it, and I spent a lot of time at his house) but it very nearly wasn't tolerable to PC gamers. Its sole redeeming feature was that it was far more social than PC shooters. Playing it felt like going backwards 5-10 years in graphics, level design, gameplay, et c., plus the controls were astonishingly terrible (unless played in dual-controller mode, but that was no good for multiplayer). About the only feature it had going on that was up-to-date for the time were the multiple hit-zones on enemies (different animations and amount of damage depending on where you hit them).

Perfect Dark was a huge improvement in every way (and in many ways is still unsurpassed), and with modern controls on the XBox 360 port, I still play it to this day. Going back to Goldeneye from Perfect Dark, though? Oof. Even at the time, Perfect Dark's release seemed like it straight-up obsoleted Goldeneye, aided by the fact that it included renamed clones of some of the best Goldeneye multiplayer levels and many of the weapons (though, why would you play with them when you have Perfect Dark weapons available? They're so bland)

You didn’t have to use two controllers. You could do the preset where you use the D-pad to strafe and the stick to turn. It’s basically the same as PC.

That's just a flipped mapping of the default, which used the c-pad (just another d-pad, really, but with discrete buttons) for strafe, right? I wouldn't think that's an improvement, since A and B are on the c-pad side.

[EDIT] I mean, I was just nostalgia-playing a little Goldeneye on the Switch like last week for the first time in years, and checked the mappings because my god is the default bad, and if you know one that can put look + turn on the stick, and forward/back/strafe on the c-pad... that'd be great. It didn't look to me like any did that, so I just stuck with the default.

I have the same feeling about OoT but I find many old games to be extremely playable. I think the difference is that the highly replayable games have very responsive controls and throw you into the action very quickly. I could probably replay original Legend of Zelda and enjoy it, but I actually did try with Skyward Sword and the game is too much in the player’s way too often. BotW was very good at getting out of the player’s way and letting the player do things.

Personally I'm never put off by old visuals, and find that as you go along with it you stop noticing. However, I avoid replaying games like this. Once it's finished, it's finished - you won't get the same experience ever again. Instead I go through old catalogs of games I missed.

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